how to be
in a holiday resort
where the Have is strolled
and swaggered and tattoo’d
catching glance like after-image
when the eyes are closed?

~O___,

why aren’t I writing? Well
I am
but I was expecting to see something else when I wrote
the flow of another holiday
rather than theconcordance
that I have still yet to discover
in my writing eyes wide
closed

,___O~

certainly
the sun and skin keep me
lapping without gain
and replaying the chorus from the ‘Nightfly’
unsure if I ever got the verse

___“O”—

but nevertheless
I still worry that I don’t write
as Plath and Salinger would lifefully so

I even know the answer
but I cannot sit at the moment,
I thought I had armour by the sea but it has

so quickly rusted
and I’m overweight and 54 thinking
of illness and waste

aghh – we’ve been infectedit’s spreading through the systemwe’re losing our files …it’s taken out the processor …I, I can’t open with this program anymore …it’s scanning me –I’ve got to buy a Virus Protection Programfrom it …

we process education
and pupils get measured
we condition education
and pupils find their selves
defined or confused
we target education
and pupils lose their trajectory
we measure education
and pupils believe it
we make education relevant
and pupils get bored
we sloganise education
and pupils wear uniforms
we teach education
and pupils ‘don’t get it’
we teach learning in education
and pupils just remember
at best or not
we train ourselves in education
actually we don’t anymore
we workshop education
and pupils fill out forms
we expect in education
and pupils leak like water

here and there a teacher teaches
and a pupil learns
but that soon stops because everyone
is too busy
we teach, pupils learn … something
but there is no
education

I published this a while ago and no one noticed it – it probably went in to most peoples’ spam box; as I go through my haemorrhage from school some of these pieces will re-surface, I’m afraid … wait ’til you see ghosts with opened wounds again – it’s coming, can’t you hear it rattle; ‘well no, that’s the whole point!’ …

it is amazing
I realise because how much
again and again before the same old
unambiguous heart ambition can
to find my naïve and cover the
again and again same old illness
self and relapse and seem to be
will have to build my the cure I suppose
that it isn’t although I I should be grateful
eventually heartened that I’m not cured
broken, and then as I thought –
and I am heart- gives me something
virtuous was despite more for pride
I thought everything to relinquish
creative was despite and love to
I thought everything dissipate leaving
was always despite the cure ready-
I thought the cure prescribed and
but for the doubt; dosed – a self-healed
slightly arched brows – man without edges
without history and

listening
to a teacher delivering to his group: “… them’s the rules and regulations … it is vital that … looking smart …”
… something about school uniform
I guess

it is this corporate appearance-led rhetoric in education
which I can no longer even pretend to back
because career-long I have not been able to engage any
dialogue with it

being ‘professional’ has ceased to be a practice
it is now a conformity
it is now a consistency
no dialogue
just expectation
and we all know what happens to consistency when the lead shifts
from value-led to outcomes-led
(yes … value-bled)

I have not been able to work out a position
behind the rhetoric because
I have not been allowed the ‘give’ (of course the ‘take’ is ‘rivers deep mountains wide’)
the ‘call’
and certainly the ‘response’
has been dodged and bluffed like a poker hand

the exercise and practice of teaching professionalism
has been ‘chumped’ up down and sideways
never to be listened to again and again and again

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… Mark; remember …

"... the impulse to keep to yourself what you have learned is not only shameful; it is destructive. Anything you do not give freely and abundantly becomes lost to you. You open your safe to find ashes.
~ Annie Dillard